National Legion of Decency

The National Legion of Decency, also known as The Catholic Legion of Decency, was founded in 1933 as an organization dedicated to identifying and combating objectionable content in motion pictures from the point of view of the American Catholic Church. After receiving a stamp of approval from the secular offices behind Hollywood’s Production Code, films during this time period were then submitted to the National Legion of Decency to be reviewed prior to their official duplication and distribution to the general public. Condemnation by the Legion would shake a film’s core for success because it meant the population of Catholics, some twenty million strong at the time, were theoretically forbidden from attending any screening of the film under the notion of mortal sin. The efforts to help parishioners avoid films with objectional content backfired when it was found that it helped promote those films in heavily Catholic neighborhoods among Catholics who may have seen the listing as a suggestion. Although the Legion was often envisioned as a huge bureaucratic arm of the Catholic Church, it instead was little more than a loose confederation of local organizations with each diocese appointing a local Legion director, usually a parish priest, who was responsible for Legion activities in that diocese.